1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to flexible data exchange between two or more devices, and, in particular, to an asymmetric, dynamically extensible data exchange software.
2. Background Art
In general, in the descriptions that follow, we will italicize the first occurrence of each special term of art which should be familiar to those skilled in the art of designing software. In addition, when we first introduce a term that we believe to be new or that we will use in a context that we believe to be new, we will bold the term and provide the definition that we intend to apply to that term. This definition will either be immediately following the first use of the term or in the table of definitions at the end of the detailed invention description section. In addition, throughout this description, we may use the terms assert and negate when referring to the rendering of a signal, signal flag, status bit, or similar apparatus into its logically true or logically false state, respectively. For convenience, we will indicate a related triplet of data by bounding the related terms together within “< >” markers.
Additionally, this invention is related to the following co-pending application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/442,683, filed on Feb. 16, 1999, and entitled “Generic Communications Protocol Translator,” which is incorporated by reference for all purposes into this document.